


even the boulder quite literally is not the same

by agletbaby



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Non-Linear Narrative, Self Harm, as depicted in canon, the time-honoured hq!! tradition of older brothers turning out to be fallible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:28:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26678224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agletbaby/pseuds/agletbaby
Summary: Years later, a reporter calls Sachirou. “We’re doing a profile on your brother,” she tells him. “We want to know, what was the best advice he ever gave you?”Sachirou thinks for a moment, and laughs before he replies. “Well, his volleyball advice was always pretty unhelpful, I’m afraid. But I've forgiven him for that. He taught me to be kind to wasps instead.”
Relationships: Hirugami Fukurou & Hirugami Sachirou
Comments: 3
Kudos: 66





	even the boulder quite literally is not the same

Once, a wasp gets into Sachirou’s bedroom. He’s young, but he knows that buzzing means danger, and he panics accordingly.

Fukurou follows Sachirou’s yelling and pointing sceptically. When he sees the wasp, though, he has to take a big breath in and, for a moment, his hands tremor, right up until Sachirou presses in behind him, peering round his hip. “Okay,” Fukurou says, with all the authority his eleven year old voice can muster. “Right. Do you have a piece of paper and a cup?”

Five minutes later, Sachirou is staring through the slight warp of glass to the living thing suspended inside, between paper and air and his brother’s hands. It’s still buzzing.

“It doesn’t look happy,” he says.

“No,” Fukurou agrees, a little nervously. “It doesn’t.” Then he remembers he’s in big brother mode, and smiles. “But it will be soon, when it gets outside. It’s only unhappy because of where it is. And it’s only dangerous because it’s unhappy.” He doesn’t say that if the wasp stings someone, it would hurt itself the most, because Sachirou looks too bright-eyed to know about death yet. He doesn't say it because he doesn't quite know himself.

“Can I hold it?” Sachirou asks then, kindness flashing alluringly in the reflection of light off the glass. Fukurou nods, and they carefully transfer the momentary ecosystem between them, Sachirou sticking his tongue out a little in concentration. His brother's hands, as they pat Sachirou's onto the paper, feel as unshakeable as stone.

“Make sure you keep your hand on top, and– there. You’ve got it.”

“I’ve got it!”

“Yeah.” Fukurou smiles proudly, and holds the front door open. Beyond him, the sky is big and blue and white. “See, that was easy. The wasp just needed someone to care.”

And then he guides Sachirou’s hand away from the paper again, and together they slide the sheet off, and let the wasp go.

* * *

Years later, a reporter calls Sachirou. “We’re doing a profile on your brother,” she tells him. “We want to know, what was the best advice he ever gave you?”

Sachirou thinks for a moment, and laughs before he replies. “Well, his volleyball advice was always pretty unhelpful, I’m afraid. But I've forgiven him for that. He taught me to be kind to wasps instead.”

* * *

“Wow,” says Fukurou, smiling up from the sofa when Sachirou gets home from his junior volleyball club practice. His hair is shorter than it was when he was last home, Sachirou thinks, although he can't actually remember what it looked like before. “You’re taller every time I see you!”

“Don’t do your stupid big brother voice,” Shouko says, without looking away from the tv. She got back from school a couple of days before Fukurou, and has taken complete possession of the remote: there's a lot she has to catch up on, and apparently that includes getting on Sachirou's nerves. “It’s annoying.”

Sachirou doesn’t know what big brother voice she’s talking about; Fukurou sounds the same as he always does when they talk. So he just smiles back, and says, “Welcome home.”

By the time Sachirou is twelve, he’s not had an older brother for longer than he’s had one. He has to teach himself how to serve and only knows how to squabble with Shouko and cares for wasps himself.

It's been so long that he doesn’t even remember Fukurou leaving, although he must have stood outside the house and made goodbye starburst shapes with his fingers, a five year old’s impression of a wave, and Fukurou must have returned the gesture with his free hand, the one which wasn’t struggling to hold up a suitcase he's since grown into. Sachirou doesn't remember that, but it must have happened. There must have been a threshold between brother and memory of a brother. The step into the family car that drove him away, perhaps, or the door to the middle school dorm Fukurou lived in for the next three years. Or, maybe, it was the painted line around the first volleyball court that Fukurou ever walked onto.

And yet, despite the space and time opening up like a sky between them, Fukurou is still his brother, even if he only flits back home for holidays. It's enough that Sachirou still succumbs to the instinct to look up, towards him. The instinct means that, by the time he is twelve, Sachirou is about to leave as well.

* * *

If you’re playing volleyball and it doesn’t hurt, you’re doing it wrong.

Seriously. The balls come at you fast. You should expect to ache.

At first, Sachirou is perversely proud of the bruises which Yurisei Middle School prods into him, each one another receive made, another meter covered, another minute spent improving; like books added to a pile, they have to be helpful. At last, it just feels weird to not have them. That’s fine, though, because each point of pain is small. Sachirou knows that every detail matters, which means each detail must exist on its own. Nothing has to hurt more than the reach of each bruise's circumference. The fact it does is just something else to work on.

He’s on a team, here, so he needs to deal with this himself. He can’t let it get beyond the boundary of his skin. He mustn’t let it get loose, let it slosh red dark across the court. They’d all slip in it. He can’t let it affect the team.

* * *

He and Fukurou take the dog for a walk. The sky had been light when they’d started out, but the sun’s set has since pulled it down towards crimson.

“I still can’t believe you’re going to be playing for Yurisei soon,” Fukurou tells him. “They were my middle school’s rivals, you know.”

Sachiro does, so he just shrugs. The dog, whose lead he’s holding, looks up at him, feeling the gesture. “They went to nationals this year.”

“I know,” Fukurou says, and tries to ruffle Sachirou’s hair, only there isn’t much to ruffle, now it’s shaved short. He laughs it off, up above Sachirou's head, and sounds impossibly adult, even though he's only just turned eighteen. Fukurou is always so tall, so far ahead, so undeniably where he is, which is elsewhere. Like a rock, he's dependable and hard to get to know. “I guess it's been a while since I played against them, so I'll forgive you. Hey, isn't it funny that we’ve both just graduated?”

Sachiro nods, although he doesn’t know much about what leaving high school means for his brother, only that he’s going to university, and that he’s leaving in two weeks, three days before Sachiro starts middle school.

“Are you nervous?” Fukurou asks, and scrunches his hand into the thick fur on the dog’s back, like Sachirou does when he feels shy. Like he kind of wants to now. “’Cos I definitely am.”

“Oh. No way.” This is firmer ground for Sachirou, who knows he’s good at volleyball, and doesn’t yet see what else matters. “Why're you?”

Fukurou laughs again. “There's tons of reasons. All those new people. Trying to get good grades. And learning how to play with a new team. That might be tough.”

“Oh, right,” says Sachiro. He knows this, from the volleyball books he borrows from his dad, and from his coach's speeches, and from playing, even. Bad advice does not fly in alone on bat's wings, summoned out of some nowhere. Sometimes, it starts off good. “Because everything is connected. So if you mess up, the team messes up.”

In the darkening evening light, a funny expression passes over Fukurou’s face. When Sachiro thinks back, he recognises it as conflict, and is surprised by how young his brother seems. At the time, Fukurou looks as sure as always. “Uh, I mean, it doesn't have to be that bad. Just don’t mess up too much. And make sure to apologise if you do.”

Sachiro commits this to memory as he does with all his brother’s advice, scattered like sparks across the tarmac of years, and nods vigorously. “I will! And– won't, either.”

“Good to know,” Fukurou starts, and then pauses to think for a moment. He decides to try to help. He doesn't. He says, “It’s going to be tough. I wish someone had warned me when I started playing at my middle school. All that new training really hurts, especially if you’re as driven as we both are. But the pain’ll be okay, so long as you keep working hard, and care about what you’re doing.”

There's only a dog's-width between them, but they can barely hear each other across it. Sachiro nods again, agrees again, and above him, a sheet of paper inches a little closer to the rim of a glass.

* * *

In middle school, Sachirou reaches a wall. It’s metaphorical, but only at first.

Afterwards, it shocks him, remakes him in hindsight, but in the moment, it’s inevitable. The steadfast stone, his useless hand. The pull of blood, as inane as a loose thread. He can keep tugging at it, and everything will unravel. The hole that would reveal itself, black as the universe, red as a scrape against skin, looks like an escape hatch.

And then Hoshiumi is there. He holds out his own hand (care, curled tight around tissues) and with it draws a different exit door in the cool air, and draws a different conclusion for Sachirou, and draws him back in. Sachirou follows him, not towards black, but into sky blue.

* * *

Once, a wasp gets into the club room and, for five minutes, pandemonium reigns over all.

Sachirou, though, ducks purposefully between Gao (wheeling his arms with wild unhelpfulness) and Hoshiumi (who’s not even scared of wasps, but can't bear to see chaos go by unaided), holding his fast-emptied water bottle and a school notebook. “Don’t swat at it,” he says. “Let it live.”

As he uses the rim of the bottle to corral the wasp onto the green plane of the book, Nozawa smiles and calls from the back of the room, “You’re immovable off court too, huh, Hirugami. Nothing bothers you.”

Sachirou ignores him at first; the wasp is almost there, balanced between the void of the clubroom, and the resolute square of notebook, which now, momentarily, exists only as a dock for it to berth at. Finally, after a shift of one leg, then another, then a short blur of wings, it moves enough, and Sachirou can bring the bottle down, trapping it between plastic and paper. Within his hands.

It's only as he leaves, carefully pressing the notebook to the bottle neck, knowing the wasp is inexorably and forgivably angry, that he replies to Nozawa. “This isn’t me being immovable. I care about this.”

Outside, the sky is blue and white. Sachirou lifts the bottle, and lets himself go.

* * *

Years later, the reporter sounds incredulous. “Your brother didn’t give you any useful advice at all? You know he’s captain of the Schweiden Adlers, right? He must have had some handy tips.”

“I'm sure he's come up with something helpful since I was a kid,” Sachirou concedes, good-naturedly. “And I definitely know he's captain. I always watch their games and cheer him on. Or, I watch some of them, at least. When Kourai-kun really badgers me.” He smiles, like light on glass, like kindness, and then remembers she can’t see him through the phone. “I care.”

**Author's Note:**

> title is from 'buried at springs' by james schuyler, as are the lines "There is a certain challenge/in being humane to hornets/but not much", which this whole thing is really built on


End file.
